The Supreme Court on Monday asked the government to respond to a petition by a former Madras High Court judge for implementation of the One Rank, One Pension (OROP) norm for retired High Court judges, saying there is a disparity in the pension paid to judges appointed from the Bar and those promoted from the subordinate judiciary to the High Courts.
A Bench, led by Justice J. Chelameswar, issued notice on the petition by the retired judge M. Vijayaraghavan, who has sought a direction from the Supreme Court to the government to evolve a formula “to obviate the disparities in the pension payable to judges drawn from subordinate judiciary and the judges drawn from the Bar in tune with the ‘One Rank, One Pension’ norm laid down by the Supreme Court in the 2014 judgment in Ramakrishnam Raju’s case.”
The petition, filed through advocate B. Balaji, quotes the 2014 judgment observing that “when persons holding constitutional office retire from service, making discrimination in the fixation of the pensions depending upon the source from which they were appointed is in breach of Article 14 and 16(1) of the Constitution. One Rank, One Pension must be the norm in respect of a constitutional office.”
In fact, this 2014 judgment was based on complaints from retired judges that pension for those of them appointed as judges directly from the Bar was less compared to that of their counterparts who were promoted from the subordinate judiciary.
The 2014 judgment had led to the High Court and the Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Amendment Act 2016. This law had amended provisions in the High Court Judges Act of 1954 and the Supreme Court Judges Act of 1958.
